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December 2016

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The All Pakistan Textile Manufacturers Association (APTMA) has urged the Ministry of Commerce to exclude polyester staple fibre (PSF) from the negative list that is currently being finalised with India.

APTMA is hopeful that the issue would be taken up for discussion with the Indian Minister for Commerce and Industry, Anand Sharma, who has arrived in Pakistan on February 13, on a three-day visit to boost bilateral trade relations between the two neighbouring countries.

PSF is a basic raw material for making synthetic textiles and there is a huge demand-supply gap in Pakistan. Making free import of PSF from India would benefit all synthetic-oriented industries from yarn to garments.

Mr. Sheikh Muhammad Akbar, Central Vice Chairman of APTMA, told fibre2fashion, “APTMA has urged the Commerce Ministry not to include PSF in the negative list because we want to have a fair price in our market.”

Explaining further, he says, “The production capacity in Pakistan is not enough to meet the demand. Currently, we import it from China and other countries because we could not import from India, though it would have been cheaper for us to do so from the logistics point of view.”

Analysing the impact of allowing free import of yarn and not allowing the same for PSF, he says, “Yarn is freely importable from India but they are restricting the PSF to be imported from India, which would mean that they can dump the yarn into our market. So, to compete with them, we need to have PSF freely importable from India. If they do not let the fibre (PSF) freely importable to our country, it will create a price difference and the yarn made from PSF would become very costly.”

Informing about other issues that are likely to be taken up during the Indian Minister's visit, he says, “There are certain entities which are a real concern for Pakistan. There are different duties and taxes that prevail in various provinces of India and there are some laboratories in India where we need to send our products for testing, which is also a cumbersome process. So, we are going to ask the Indian Minister to make the processes less complicated.”

“If Pakistan does not levy any tax on Indian goods, then there should not be any taxes from the other side also. This will enable both the countries to avail mutual benefits,” he concludes.